Rome is Degraded. Can't wait to Return

A personal favorite.  No orange fencing or yellow tape here, probably because this project, intended to protect
pedestrians and vehicles from the collapsing wall at left, was initiated years ago--perhaps decades ago--before
orange fencing was invented.  Maybe before plastic was invented.  The road is via di Porta San Pancrazio, on the Gianicolo, below the steps leading from Acqua Paola.  Via Garibaldi is ahead. 

Because we're in Rome only once each year (though for an extended period), we see both less--and more--than year-around residents.  We miss many of the day-to-day details of the city's governance.  But our absence also provides a greater sense of change, of how today's Rome differs from last year's Rome. 

The picture isn't entirely bleak.  On the positive side, the efforts of Tevereterna and other organizations are beginning to reshape Romans' relationship to the Tevere, a relationship damaged, we once thought permanently, by the enormous walls erected in the late-19th century to control flooding.  The enormous and powerful William Kentridge mural on the west bank may mark a turning point in this regard.  Incredibly, Romans are beginning (but just beginning) to pick up after their dogs.  So, too, the turn to private sources of funding to restore Rome's public monuments and buildings holds promise for cleaning up and repairing Rome's cultural heritage.  More on this in a future post. 

In some ways, however, the city and environs appear to be more degraded (degrado is the Italian word) than ever. 

1) The pothole problem.  The Romans refers to the holes in their streets as "buchi"--that is, holes.  And they are, we believe, rightfully concerned that their streets are becoming more hazardous year by year.  Our perspective on this derives from the 700 miles we put on the scooter each time we visit, over roads in every section of the city.  Hitting a pothole or a rough patch of road can be dangerous, but avoiding potholes is dangerous too, especially when the streets are wet, but any time.  Pothole avoidance inevitably distracts the driver from other problems on the road, and may take the scooter into the path of another, faster-moving vehicle, approaching from behind.

The worst Rome road by far is a quagmire of potholes, bumps and gravel leading to a sports facility on the north end of the city; simply scary.  Of the major consular roads, via Salaria may be the worst; as one exits Rome proper and moves onto the narrow, 2-lane, fast-moving "highway" north of the city, the right 2/3 of both lanes is simply undriveable on a scooter.  The left 1/3 is fine, but it positions the scooter perilously close to oncoming traffic.  In the city, most streets are worse than they were last year, in our opinion.  I was too busy dodging potholes to photograph them.

The Bernini "bee fountain" on via Veneto, nicely framed by
orange fencing

2) The orange fencing problem.  Whoever has the orange fencing contract for Rome is doing very well, indeed.  It's everywhere.  Its purpose is to fence off projects while they're being worked on.

Useless fencing on the Lungotevere

That's noble, except that one seldom sees anyone working in or around the orange-fenced areas, and it's rare that a project gets done and the fencing removed. 

Collapsed fountain, Flaminio, rear of
Tree Bar

Put another way, the city appears to be adept at installing the orange fencing, yet rather inefficient at getting the required work done and the fencing removed.  Hence the impression--and it's really just that--that the orange fencing is accumulating, year after year. 

Almost an art work.  For patrons of bar, right.

 However
appropriate it might be in protecting citizens from say, walking into a hole, it's also bright, ugly, and, as a sign that not much is getting done, all too obvious. On this trip alone,  we took a dozen photos of orange fencing, and could have taken dozens more.  We're sharing just a few.

Protecting peds from fallen tree.  Looks like it
didn't fall yesterday.

3) The yellow tape problem.  Yellow tape is sometimes used for the same purpose as orange fencing: to mark a potential hazard.  Here's a good example: a large portion of a tree has fallen on the sidewalk, and the danger is set off with yellow plastic tape.  The same tape is used for crowd and automobile management, for example to mark areas where parking is prohibited during a soccer match.  As letters to the editor in the local papers reveal, the authorities often fail to remove this "control" tape when as event is over.  So it remains in place, sometimes for weeks.

4. The trash problem.  Not exactly man bites dog.  Everyone--literally, not figuratively--knows that Rome has a trash problem.  Trash is--figuratively, not literally--everywhere. 

Piazza Mancini, Flaminio

Every neighborhood,  almost every sidewalk.  On one street after another, garbage bags, boxes, mattresses, construction debris--you name it--sits on the street next to overflowing trash bins.

Why?  No one seems to know. Too few bins?  Infrequent pickups?  Lazy garbage workers?  Obstructionist unions?  Tight budgets?  Romans who don't care?  If Virginia Raggi, the newly-elected mayor, can find a solution and clean up the city, she's a cinch to get re-elected. Good luck.

Building collapse

6.  Projects that never end--or don't even begin.  We witnessed one of these on our last trip, staying in a building on the Lungotevere at Piazza Gentile da Fabriano.  In February of this year (2016), long before we arrived, several floors of an identical building on the other side of the piazza collapsed, producing tons of rubble that had to be removed from the sidewalk and streets below.  The city moved the debris from the sidewalk but did not remove it, opting to deposit it in a huge mound across the two outbound lanes of the Lungotevere, one of the busiest streets in Rome.  Four months later, when we moved in, the mound was still there, still blocking the outbound Lungotevere, and forcing every vehicle taking that route to turn into the piazza, go around it (passing three major streets), and negotiate a stoplight before moving on.

Rubble storage site: the Lungotevere.  In three weeks at this location, we never saw anyone working here.  Still,
someone dropped off the dumpster.  Progress?

Oh, yes: we can't wait to return.  After all, it's Rome.

Bill
 

"Sorry for the inconvenience.  We're working to improve our city."  Working, maybe.  But not here.

 

Rome's Alice Pasquini: Street Art Feminism, and Beyond

Closed newspaper kiosk, Piazza Mancini, Flaminio 

It's not easy to find information about Rome-based street artist Alice Pasquini.  What's available on the internet seems to come mostly from her website--valuable in its way, but limited and perhaps misleading.  Featured prominently on that website are the words "a visual artist who works as an illustrator, set designer and painter," but one searches in vain for evidence of her work as a set designer, and it's not clear where she's worked as an illustrator--unless she's referring here to her smaller works of street art.  She's essentially a painter, sometimes a stenciller.  Although her website, and other accounts derived from it, give her name as Alice and AliCè, her work is commonly signed Alice (pronounced Ah-lee-chay in Italian; hence the AliCè may be more representative, although in Italian the accent is on the second syllable).

Portrait of Alice by C215

What is clear is that she's prolific.  At age 35 (born 1980--even that was hard to find), she's worked as a street artist in dozens of major cities, including London, Sydney, New York, Barcelona, Saigon and, of course, Rome.

Pasquini grew up in Rome Prati quartiere, immersed in the '90s hip-hop scene, where she discovered SprayLiz--a comic book heroine whose specialty was political graffiti. Inspired, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, took some coursework in animation in Madrid (where she earned an MA in Critical Arts Studies at the Universidad Computense), and lived for a year in London. Somewhere along the way--there's a certain vagueness in her own reports--"I specialized in old style animation and worked as an illustrator and set designer."




Having been warned that painting was dead, she became a painter.  "'Art died with Duchamp, forget about drawing'--that's what my professors taught me and that's why I wanted to  get out of the studio and the academy."



She likes painting illegally.  "The adrenalin," she notes, "the 15 minute countdown to do something decent--to have your eyes on the lookout, to test what you can do spontaneously." Some of the smaller pieces she's done in Rome probably are in the "illegal" category, for she likes to paint on public objects--trash bins, electrical boxes, for example--that "could need a little love."

A small portion of Alice's work at a bar/kiosk in
Piazza Mancini, Flaminio

That said, in a current climate in which the best street art is recognized, encouraged and, in a certain way, contained, Pasquini has found accommodation with the "academy."  In Rome, her work has been exhibited at MACRO (2014), the American Embassy (2013), the Casa dell'Architettura (2013, a sensational one-woman show), and most recently at the Temple University gallery on the Tevere (2015).  In addition, it seems obvious that much of the Flaminio work--on kiosk businesses--was accomplished with permission.

Army barracks, site of 2015 Outdoor Festival, opening Oct. 2

With 15 other artists, Pasquini will participate in the 2015 edition of the Outdoor Festival, mounted this year at via Guido Reni 7, a former army barracks (ex-caserma) near the MAXXI gallery in Flaminio.  The show opens October 2.

One needn't depend on galleries to see Pasquini's work.  There's plenty of it on Rome's walls and other surfaces--especially in Flaminio, where she lived for a time with fellow street artist C215 (an influence on her work), Quadraro, and San Lorenzo, where a major mural lines via dei Sabelli.

Pasquini's street art celebrates "strong, independent women" (her words), contemplative, confident, sensuous, emotional, and usually joyful young women, meeting the world and engaging life in a physical way, whether leaping in exultation, riding a motorscooter (above), running, or relaxing in the confidence of one's body (see the painting at the top of this post). A website describes her art as "affectionate."




The via dei Sabelli mural (above and below) in San Lorenzo has a dark, threatening quality--one is tempted to say post-apocalyptic.

The elaborate work carried out in the basement of the Casa dell'Architettura, titled "Cave of Tales" (translated into English) also has that dark, foreboding quality, here suggesting that young women in the big city face a potentially difficult and threatening future.

The challenges of the big city, rendered in something
like German expressionist style

Alice at work

Alice plans with a ballpoint pen and sketchbook.  Studio work is accomplished with acrylics and enamels on wood, smaller city pieces with stencils, larger wall paintings with acrylics and spray paints.  Her work doesn't strike us as unusually innovative, especially given the enormous creativity and inventiveness of the current generation of street artists.  She's a painter, working--again, for a street artist--in a surprisingly traditional style and with a feminist message that's both welcome and rather well-traveled.

As you walk the city and come across the art of Alice Pasquini, consider, too, her words describing the dilemma of the street artist:

Moscow, 2014

"An artist who works outside, you always have one problem: you work someplace which isn't your own, where you don't live and to which you may not ever return.  What you do should be artistically or politically important.  But it is not a given that it will be positive for the people who have to live with it every day. This is a risk I take with my form of art."

Bill

Alice decorates a small trailer, courtyard of the Lanificio, a factory artspace, via di Pietralata, 59 (2013) . Dianne at right